


Trinity

by tatch



Series: Me, him, (them,) us [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: A bunch of horrible stuff but it doesn't get into details, Almighty nanites replacing limbs and senses since 2070, And you should get an idea of who the two OCs in chapter 5 are with Fallout and some googling, Being trapped inside your own body, Characters to be added as the story progresses, Depersonalization symptoms, Disabled Character, Dissociative Behavior, Helplessness, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Graphic Torture, Non-graphic living dissection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Purring sentient bloodthirsty mist, Rating May Change, Reaper76 - Freeform, Role Reversal, You've been warned, vague fallout references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2018-09-25 03:57:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9801641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatch/pseuds/tatch
Summary: The vigilante known as Angel has been working for the past 6 years on bringing Talon down. Overwatch finally track him down and ask for his help. Despite his hatred for both organisation, he agrees on joining them for a single mission: locating and destroying Project 76, whatever it may be.Based onthis AU





	1. Angel - part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThoughtfulObserver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtfulObserver/gifts).



 

There’s someone in his safe house. It’s his first thought as he comes into view of the building. Nothing looks out of place, but he just. Knows. Seven years ago, he would have passed that as paranoia (still would have checked the place out, gun in hand) but the thought would have left his mind rather fast. Now, though… Now, he’s checking the small decrepit house from two streets away. He had put some distance between him and the building, the moment he’d realized something was wrong. The door hasn’t been broken or torn apart, the sheets he put on the windows were still there, there’s no light but-

But the leaves that the autumn wind had left on the path that led up to the front door were crumpled, trampled to the ground, and Angel never passed through there.

The advanced zoom installed in his mask informs him that the sheet that’s the closest to the streetlight is just slightly ajar, one of the corners peeled to let some light in, and Angel had never touched those sheets once he’d set them up.

It tells him that the back door’s handle is no longer a bit higher than its normal position but is instead in said normal position, and Angel always, always sets it a bit higher when he leaves or comes through there.

 

He sighs and passes a hand under his mask, rubbing his eyes. He caught about two hours of sleep in the last four days. To say that he is cranky, exhausted and slightly irritable would be an understatement. Whoever picked today to break into his place is going to fucking regret they had not died earlier and somewhere else. A growl rumbles through his chest and makes its way to his lips, the sound coming angry and pissed. Really really pissed. Also very very tired. He needs to get some rest, not to have to deal with this, whatever ‘this’ is.

  
He moves, closing the distance through the sewers. He checks his traps and the markers he put down there, but it seems like they had not found this route. Good. This part of the city is just on the edge of the ruins that have been abandoned since the Crisis, and the sewer system doesn’t work. The only real inconvenience is that some of the stale air from the working parts of the sewers stains the air but it’s nowhere near as disgusting as the real thing. Angel moves on until he reaches the tunnel that leads up to his safe house and then, starts climbing. The exit point is situated between a fake wall and one of the actual walls of this peculiar safe house.

Angel has been using this safe house for almost twenty years now and he’s transformed it to be able to resist every possible attack. There are hidden rooms and fake walls all around, some connected, some not. All of it is soundproof, of course. Angel has a couple more safe houses that are ‘customized’ like this one, spread out all over the world. There are also two weapons caches inside the house, on top of the decoy one that’s ‘hidden’ in the bedroom. Well, the bedroom. It’s not like Angel sleeps there anyway. Okay, he does from time to time, when he’s too drunk or too exhausted, but the fluffy covers and the soft mattress bring back memories he’s trying to keep buried. Memories that are too painful, too jagged, too broken and sharp for him to be able to remember them, feel them, on an everyday basis. Angel has grown used to the soul crushing void of how much he has lost when he wakes up alone every morning, but that doesn’t mean he wants to feel it every second of every minute of every day.

 

Angel can hear the intruders _(because yeah, there’s more than one)_ speaking in hushed tones, some of them growing impatient, asking if, how they’re sure that he’s coming back here. One of them reassures the lot, the room goes quiet for a minute, then the whispers start anew. He wants to laugh. Who is he up against, rookies? Has Talon taken to send rookies against him? Well, might as well make a good impression. He steps into the small corner that leads to the actual room, an almost invisible nook filled with darkness, that he covered with an hologram, making it pretty much invisible.  
  
It’s hard to really see in the dark but he can make out five silhouettes. One is sprawled on his couch, the two other are waiting at the doors (for him to come in, Angel guesses) and the last two have their backs to the corner of the room that has no windows and no doors, no doubt thinking that they’re protecting themselves from incoming attackers. Angel grins, an ugly shark-like twist of his lips, that stays hidden under the owl mask covering his whole face. They have their backs to him. He takes his shotguns out and, silent as the shadow he has been for the past two decades and a half, steps out of the hologram and points the barrels to their hearts, resting it against skin.

“Send my regards to Talon.”

Breathings hitch, bodies tense, the other agents turn his way but they’re slow, way too slow.

“Is that any way to treat your allies?”

Angel’s answer is a snarl. “Talon never was my ally.”

“Good thing we’re not Talon then.”

The sentence stops his fingers on the triggers, still resting there but no longer pulling. He considers, his eyes still trained on the other agents. They could have tried to shoot him by now, he expected them to do so, but they haven’t, hands resting on weapons, said weapons not pointed at him.

“Talk.”

 

It’s not the one who talked previously, his back to him, Angel’s shotgun pointed at his heart, that answers, but one of those watching the doors. “We’re after Talon too and figured you might want to have some back-up instead of fighting alone.” The voice has a southern accent and Angel feels something like dread trickle down his veins. _‘Please someone tell me I’m not that unlucky.’_

The intruder takes a step forward and steps into the thin ray of light that streams from the peeled corner of the sheets, and Angel takes a step back in instinct, because that is fucking Jesse McCree, which makes them the newly formed Overwatch. And they want him to join them. He slips into his vigilante persona, knowing that Jesse can read him _(he trained the kid, he knows damn well what he’s capable of)_ and if he’s not careful, will guess who he is within minutes. And Angel has worked very hard to ensure that Gabriel Reyes stayed dead and buried, forgotten by all.

 

He slips the shotguns back into their holsters and moves to the kitchen, slapping the light on as he goes, ignoring the agent _(is that a bow)_ in his path.

“I’m not interested.” There’s a couple of groans, ‘for fuck’s sake’ and various curses filling the room, as eyes accustomed to darkness are suddenly flooded with light.

“Welco- what?” Angel searches the cupboards for something edible and settles for some canned beans. He should probably buy some food, but, now that this place has been compromised, he doesn’t plan on coming back here anytime soon. No need to restock. Jesse followed him to the kitchen, of course he did, and watches as Angel sets some water to boil.

“Why?”

The vigilante turns back to the cowboy. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Not without an answer.”

Angel’s temper slips. “Get. Out.” He hisses, eyes narrowing.

He doesn’t want to have anything to do with Overwatch, not after what happened. Jack is dead because of Overwatch. (It’s not entirely true, and Angel knows it, but it’s true to some extent anyway.)

Winston, that fucking monkey, appears at the kitchen’s door and McCree steps away, the kid’s expression somewhere between anger and sourness. A lifetime ago, Angel would have gone after Jesse and talked to him. They would have sparred to give Angel’s anger an outlet. By the end of the spar, Angel would have felt lighter, more relaxed, and Jesse would have smiled at him with that shit eating grin, happy to have been able to help his Commander. That was then. Winston is handing him something and Angel’s attention returns to him.

“At least, hear us out. You know Talon better than we do. We need your help on this mission.” Angel takes the pad and plays the video file that’s opened on it.

 

* * *

 

There’s something like a containment room, medical grade, filled with… mist? The screen was divided in four parts. A black empty rectangle and three different feeds: two that came from outside of the room, the third one coming from the inside of what looked like an airlock of some kind. A voice started speaking.

“Entry 253: Recognition test, fifth try. Put the subjects in the airlock.” The tone is clipped, clinical.

Two persons are pushed into the airlock. One of them is wearing the Talon agents uniform, the T and the claws easily recognizable. The other is dressed like a civilian but the posture gives away that he’s more than probably Talon too. They stood in the airlock, stress and fear etched in every move, every gesture, right on the edge of terror. Whatever was behind the other door of the airlock, inside the mist filled room, those two knew damn well what it was and they were fucking terrified of it. The airlock entry closed.

“Proceed.” The two inside the airlock walked to the other door. There was a moment during which nothing happened then a blast of air pushed the mist away from the airlock door and revealed… nothing?

Angel frowned.

The airlock opened and the two stepped inside swiftly, the door sealing shut right behind them. Data appeared on the so-far empty part of the screen: ECGs, body temperature and a few other numbers and gauges. The mist that had pooled in a thick puddle that occupied the other half of the room started moving, slowly at first but then faster, expanding and uncurling in thick tendrils.

The men and the mist met.

The civilian dressed agent took a step back, horror finally winning on whatever courage the man had been holding on to until then. The mist rolled over them both, with apparently no effect.

Then, they started screaming.

The video feeds showed nothing except for the whiteness of the mist that was filling the room entirely once again, blocking the view of whatever was happening inside. The ECGs started spiking wildly and erratically, one of them flat-lining. Both data feeds were suddenly interrupted and replaced with error screens.

The voice returned, an hint of frustration in the tone of whoever was speaking. “The test ended as usual. The weapon seems to make no distinction between allies and enemies. Until this flaw is fixed, it is recommended to use Project 76 only in closed spaces, and, due to the nature of the weapon, only in spaces that can easily be contained. End of entry 253.”

The video stops.

 

* * *

 

Angel blinks at the screen.

“We think it might be some sort of bio-weapon.” Winston says, the gorilla’s eyes burning holes in Angel’s mask. “That’s all the information we have so far.” His expression is pinched.

Angel starts the recording again and moves to get his beans out of the fire. He uses the boiling water to make some tea, a brand Ana had first offered him almost fifteen years ago. The recording plays to the end again and he hands the pad back to its owner, then moves back to check on his tea. He sighs internally. A part of him knows he’s stalling, trying to change his mind but he has already made his decision.

This ‘Project 76’ changes things. Just enough for him to know that he has to push things aside, to know that, even though he could probably track it down, find the intel and destroy the weapon, it’d be a near thing. There is no room for near chances and almost good enough, not for something like this, something this dangerous.

Angel pulls the infuser out of the teapot and says “I’ll join you within the week.” Winston nods, his features already softening with relief.

Angel needs to crush the hope he sees blooming there right the fuck now. “Just for this one. Then I’m out. Understood?”

The face hardens back, the gaze cooling, the posture professional instead of amicable. “Yes.” Angel wants to bark a laugh. “You can travel with us if you want. It wou-”

“Thanks but no thanks. Now get out.” Winston looks at him like Angel is both the most interesting puzzle he’s ever encountered and the dirtiest stain to ever meet his sight. The gaze is like an insult and Angel feels his trigger finger twitch. The monkey must see it too because he turns back after a curt nod. A few words and the Overwatch agents all file out of his safe house through the front door. Jesse is the last one out, his expression marked with anger as he closes the door behind him.

  
Angel slips a hand under his mask and passes it down his face. Fuck. That wasn’t expected. He was supposed to finish getting rid of the Los Muertos gang and then get back in contact with his informant, who would hopefully have gotten more intel on where to hit Talon next. It was what he was paying them for, after all. Well, paying. He did things for the Sombra group and they returned the favor by giving him intel when they found it. It wasn’t exactly a friendship, despite what his contact within the group kept saying, and more of a mutually beneficial relationship. He sighs. He couldn’t stay here anyway.

Angel packs his things and gets out of the house the same way he’d gotten in. He travels much further, deeper within the tunnels, until he reaches a broken pipe, the sign he’d reached his destination. He surfaces and heads to the old broken down building he uses as a secondary base. He let his bags down and recovers the comm he uses for his calls. He barely has to wait before he receives an acknowledgement that he is connected.

“Sombra. I need a favor.”

 


	2. Angel - part 2

 

Angel had been in the Watchpoint for two full days when the team finally shows up.   
  
It had given him time to take care of a few things. First of which had been having a little talk with Athena. Of course, the AI had recognized him, greeting him with a polite but cheerful ‘Good to see you again, Commander Reyes’. He’d been relieved to learn that no-one was home. He’d thanked Athena and told her that he needed his identity to remain secret. A simple program would have just accepted him as the higher authority but she was an AI. She wasn’t on the same level as a God Program, but she wasn’t far from it either. She had questions. She had demands. After an intense talk, she had finally relented, understanding his reasons and had greeted him again, assuring him of her loyalty. She would follow his lead and keep his identity a secret. Good.

 

Angel had then snooped around a bit, learning about the new members, checking who had died in the length of time during Zurich and the Recall and who was still alive, who had answered the Recall and who was still out there. He went through rooms, eyeing, observing, gathering information. But ultimately, he ended up in front of ~~‘his’~~   _their_ room. Angel stared at the closed door for what seemed to be an eternity before he turned on his heels and headed to his old room. He couldn’t go in there. He just… couldn’t. The room was just as he remembered it, tidy and functional. He’d barely slept there. Whatever the Watchpoint, Angel had only slept in his own quarters when he and Jack weren’t on the same base. There wasn’t anything here for him. He already had all the mementos he needed. He left the room and picked quarters on the far side of the base, and occupied the rest of his time with searching for bugs and trackers and going through the data Sombra had given him.   
  
The hacker group had not been happy to learn about his new alliance with Overwatch and he’d laughed, reassuring his contact that it was a one time thing. They had given him the information he needed, on one condition. He would have to stay in contact with them throughout the mission. Angel had agreed. Sombra had long since won enough of his trust for him to agree to something like that. If they’d wanted to turn him over to Talon, or any other government agency who had put a price on the vigilante going by the moniker of Angel, they could have done it a long time ago.

 

Angel is relaxed and rested when Athena informs him that the team is back. He heads to the briefing room and is comfortably installed when the first of them, Winston, comes in. Angel watches with amusement as the scientist face shift from tired to surprised to confused and then settles on angry. “How did you get in?” “You invited me. Or did you forget?” Winston shakes his head. “Athena should have stopped you.” “Let’s just say we had a little talk and she let me in.” Angel shrugs and Winston looks worried for a second. “Athena?” “Yes, Winston?” The way the monkey’s face relaxes could have been funny but Angel was growing more annoyed by the second. He throws a copy of the datapad containing the intel about Project 76 to the _‘scientist’._ He’s being unfair again, he knows it, but this place is grating on his nerves, _they_ are grating on his nerves. He has been in the Watchpoint for only two days and all he wants is out. Jesse and Hanzo Shimada (Genji’s goddamn yakuza brother) show up, weapons in hands and questions on their lips, but Angel is already on his way out. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. All that matters is the mission.

 

* * *

 

It takes them two more days to organize said mission. Angel’s fingers are twitching with the need to do things himself but he forces himself to stay out of it. He does point out flaws and weaknesses in the plan, earning surprised glances and mumbled questions. He doesn’t answer. It’s not like he cares.

 

The trip there is… uneventful. Angel passes the time by reviewing Sombra’s intel once more. Project 76 is (apparently) a sentient bio-mechanical weapon. Four years ago, Sombra had intercepted some transmissions about results on the development of a new weapon. Of course, they’d investigated. And after more than a little hacking, had come in contact with the weapon itself. They’d given Angel the transcript of that first conversation. (Angel had not given those to Overwatch. It felt too private for him to do so and the conversation held no real information anyway) Overwatch didn’t know how Angel had gotten his intel and he’d refused to tell them anything.

 

[ Hey there, are you the 76 project? ]

**makeitstopletmediepleasemakeitstopithurts**

[ Give me a minute. There. Better? ]

**whereamiwhoareyouwhatsgoingon**

**whathappenedidontremember**

[ I have to go but I’ll be back. Hang in there, okay amigo? ]

 

There had been no answer from the weapon, or as Sombra called it, 76. The text seemed succinct but the logs that accompanied each entry indicated that the whole conversation had lasted 4 hours. Sombra had given Angel a cleaned version of their actual conversation. 76 had had a lot of trouble communicating and there had been an insane amount of interferences. They had had to search through walls of text and data to find what the weapon had actually been trying to say. There had been more communications between Sombra and Project 76, but Sombra had kept those to themselves. They’d simply told him that 76 was no longer in pain and had  been becoming more and more coherent until their last communication, about a year ago, when Talon had upped their security and gone into a closed system. No way in, no way out. All the information Sombra had about anything regarding Project 76 was a year old. They’d seemed bitter about it, but it was better than nothing, which was what Overwatch had.

 

* * *

 

 

The base is situated on the banks of Lake Zurich, under the guise of a water filtering facility. From here, Angel could see the ruins of HQ, if he just turned that way. He doesn’t. The need crawls under his skin but the knot in his chest keeps him steady, focused on the current mission. Jesse and Winston do however turn in that direction, gazing silently for long minutes before turning back, faces marked with varying levels of sadness, bitterness and anger.  
  
They had divided the team into two teams: Winston, Jesse and Angel would infiltrate the large facility from a small entry while the rest of the team would stand by, ready to launch a distraction, and attack the base from outside. Once inside, Winston would head to one of the surveillance rooms and look for Project 76’s exact location. He would then guide McCree and Angel to it. If they were discovered, Angel was to let himself get taken (not without a fight evidently). It was a known assumption-slash-fact that Angel preferred to work alone, so they hoped Talon would think he was alone.

 

Everything went well, up to a certain point.

 

Winston had parted ways with Angel and Jesse a couple of corridors away and ever since, McCree was acting like an angry petulant child. Angel sighs. It wouldn’t have been a problem but he could hear a patrol heading their way. And Jesse refused to believe him. “I don’ hear nuthin’.“ And Angel couldn’t quite tell him that he could hear them because he was enhanced. He huffs- “I don’t have time for this.” -and headbutts the kid, punching him in the stomach when he doubles over. Angel then pushes him into the empty room they’d stopped in front of when Angel had first heard the patrol. “Keep quiet.” He closes the door on Jesse’s indignant and betrayed expression.

 

Talk about not having time, he thinks as he whips a shotgun to shoot a Talon agent in the face, right when as he (she?) came in through the junction door. The next agent drops just as fast, as does the one after. Angel hears the rest scramble and shout in their comms. He needs to get out of this hallway, needs to get them away from Jesse. Before he has time to move much though, he’s hit in the leg from behind. He grunts, cursing his bad luck. He’s in a three-way junction and the only door near him is the one in which Jesse is. And they’ve got him cornered, coming from all sides at once. Fucking hell. Angel draws his other shotgun and drops more than a few other agents. He vaguely expects them to shoot him dead on the spot. But they don't. They want him alive, he realizes as one comes near enough to hit him on the side of the head with the butt of their rifle. Oh joy.

 

Angel falls backwards, vision swimming. Boots connect with his ribs, fists with his mask and his arms until he’s curled on the ground, trying to protect his vital organs. He has the time to take a few breaths, hearing one of them ask for instructions before he’s dragged away, a thin trail of blood marking his passage. Good enough. Those ingrates better not get lost with such a highway. Darkness creep at the edges of Angel’s vision. He deserves some rest after all this hard work he’s just done. And anyway, his healing enhancements always worked better when he slept. He lets the dark claim him for a bit.

 

* * *

 

 

Angel wakes up to a boot in the gut. He curls and coughs and snaps back to consciousness. His hands are cuffed. His mask is cracked. His head is still swimming. He aches from the bottom to the top. But. They brought him to the room. He’s not in the mist room, he’d be dead, never would have woken up if they had, no, but he’s in the room right outside of it. And he left a blood trail all the way to here. A sharp grin flashes on his face (still hidden behind his mask), challenging, deadly, sharp and full of dark satisfaction. A voice echoes through the room. “Get him up.” Angel is pulled to a sitting position. He winces silently. From the sharp pain that shot through him, Angel could tell that, one, he had taken a few bad hits, and two, he had not been unconscious long. If he had, he’d be healed by now. He blinks. The voice sounds again. “It’s hard to believe you have been such a thorn in the side of Talon. Look at you. Pathetic.” _‘Fuck you, you piece of shit.’_ The voice is coming from the speakers set all around the room Angel’s in. _‘Fucking coward.’_  He doesn’t voice it though.

 

The voice keeps talking (it sounds vaguely familiar) but Angel’s more interested by the whisper in his ear. “Hey hey pretty boy, miss me?” Sombra had hacked into his mask, of course they had, using his goggles to keep an eye on things, and he now had his contact talking to him through their comm. (He knew they’d been listening in from the start but since they’d said nothing, Angel had almost forgotten their presence.) He grunts in answer, gets kicked in the leg by one of the grunts. Great. The cheery voice in his ear chortles. “Don’t worry _amigo,_ I know you can’t answer.” Angel rolls his eyes. The asshat is still talking in grandiloquent tones, monologuing about Talon’s grandeur or some shit. Angel focuses back to his contact. “If you can get close enough to the room, I should be able to contact 76, tell him what’s going on.”

 

Him? Angel eyes the mist filled room. The weapon is a he? He hasn’t even seen it, _him_ yet and he already knows too much. Suddenly, Angel is pulled up to his feet. “Let me demonstrate.” The asshat is saying. _‘Demonstrate what exactly, jackass.’_ Angel is pushed-pulled toward the sas.

Oh.

That.

Crap.

 

He goes along, stumbling and tripping, making a show of how weak he is _(not)_ . As soon as Angel is close enough, he elbows one of the goons, kicks the other, reaches for a side weapon.   
  
The shot goes off on its own.

The bullet flies.

Hits the window of the containment room.

The crack is small, barely visible.

Alarms start blaring.

 

The room Angel is in goes into lockdown. Doors lock. Ventilation ceases as the vents lock too. What. The asshole (Angel finally remembers where he’d heard the voice from. It was the voice narrating the video Winston had showed him.) sounds so fucking excited all of a sudden. “A live test then. Even better.” The sas unlocks, both sets of doors open. The agents tumble away, rifles aimed at the empty space between the open doors. Some of them are shaking, a few are openly crying. Angel takes a step back. Nothing happens for a long, long handful of seconds, but then, a  white tendril curls where the door had been, and the _mist itself_ slithers out, slowly, tentatively, testing, searching for the edges of its prison.

 

A cheery whisper in his ear. “There he is. Angel, meet 76.” The mist pools and curls on itself, about a feet outside of the room. Then it curls up, rolling, undulating in convoluted volutes and tendrils as it takes a vaguely human shape. In the room, the silence is heavy, thick like tar. Then eyes snaps open all around the higher part of the human shape. Way too many eyes. A distressed noise from the sides, and Angel barely has the time to jump back to avoid the hail of bullets that comes from both sides of the room. It has no effect, of course it has no effect, it’s mist for fuck’s sake.

 

The human shaped curl of mist ripples and shudders. Retaliates. It moves, shots through the room, _fast_ , leaving nothing in its path. Literally nothing. Screams rise to die down just as fast. The mist seems to be devouring whatever it comes in contact with. Angel sits back on his heels, observing, calculating his chances. While it may look like he is well and truly fucked, it also looks like the mist is only attacking those who shot at it him.

 

Angel holsters the pistol he’d managed to grab into one of his shotgun holsters. The mist pools back in front of him and curls back into that inverted drop, vaguely human-ish shape, eyes opening once more. They all focus on him at once, unblinking, white and silver and expressionless. There’s between 5 and 9 eyes, new ones opening constantly, as older ones are closing just as fast.That gaze is so intense, Angel feels himself swallow, his back straightening a bit. He could use some cheerful lead on what to do next. But the communicator lies on the ground a few steps away (lying near the edge of those white smoky tendrils) and when he makes a move toward it, the mist mimics it, inching closer to him.

He still, it stills.

He moves back and the mist moves back.

The weapon is sentient for sure. To what extent, that’s the question. He raises his hands slowly, the cuffs holding them together, and talks, deliberately slow, to make sure the mist can hear him. “I have no intention of hurting you. I’m a friend of Sombra.” The mist, _‘no wait what had his contact called it again’_ , 76 ripples and shudders at the name of the hackers group. So, ~~it~~ he could hear him. Good. Now if he could talk, that’d be even better. Angel licks his lips and asks. “Can you talk?” 76’s form swells then deflates, ripples and billows in rapid succession. It’s hard to tell what a sentient cloud is feeling but ~~it~~ he looks…. frustrated. _Probably a no then._ “Okay. Okay.” Angel needs to find a way to communicate with 76.

 

A half buried memory makes it way up to to the front of his mind, a hard heavy knot of repressed emotion weighting in Angel’s chest at the fond recollection. He swallows and pushes the emotions back down, holding onto the idea itself. Back at SEP, one of the rounds of injections had swelled Jack’s throat so bad he couldn’t speak. He’d been tubed to breathe and needle fed until it had died down, but it had lasted two weeks. And Angel had been his partner. He’d had to communicate with him. So they had worked this system out.

 

Angel swallows, holds his arms a bit higher. “Left-” he wiggles the fingers of his left hand “-for no, right- “ _wiggle wiggle_ “-for yes. Do you understand?” The mist, 76 stills for a long second before wrapping part of ~~itself~~ himself around Angel’s arms. Angel expects cold, he expects wet, he expects pain. He doesn’t expect the blazing heat he gets or the gentle tingling sensation brushing his skin. He certainly doesn’t expect 76 to get rid of his cuffs, leaving him free and unharmed. A lot of good surprises. The crushing pressure on his right arm has him wince though. “Ease off the pressure, you’re gonna crush me.” The pressure eases off instantly, returns a soft brush. Angel nods. “Better.” A ripple through the mist. A laugh or a shrug? It’s hard to tell.

“Do you know where we are?”

 **Yes**.

“How to get out?”

A long silence then, **no.**

 

Shit. Okay, okay. At worst, Angel can follow his own blood trail back to where he ‘parted ways’ with Jesse. “I’m going to get up and get my comm-link back. Don’t attack me okay?” 76 rolls back, breaking contact and Angel gets up slowly. The eyes follow his every move as he takes the few needed steps and bends to pick the communicator up. It crackles and hisses when he puts it back into his ear. Broken. Great. He looks around and mutters. His fingers twitch, he needs his guns. “The fuck have they done with my guns.” The mist rolls and curls and shots to another part of the room, still looking at him. Angel frowns but scoots over there. He blinks.

 

There’s something that might as well be an armory in that side of the room. _‘What were they even preparing for. An invasion?’_ 76’s quiet presence nearby tells him all he needs to know though. They had been prepared to this. Prepared to their weapon escaping. Prepared to take it down, no matter what. Some of the weapons look highly experimental and Angel spares a distant thought _(This would make Winston’s day for sure)_ as he looks for his shotguns. He finds them easily. They’d been thrown carelessly on top of a pile of junk. He checks them rapidly before holstering them back into their respective holster. The pistol is slung in his belt, on his back.

 

“Thanks, man.” 76 form shudders.

Angel doesn’t know what to make of that. He does however have another question.

“I know Sombra calls you 76 but is that your name?”

In an instant, the mist wraps back around his arms. **No.**

“Do you have a name?”

 **Yes.** The mist shudders, its form breaking apart. **yesyesyesyeyesyesyes**

 

The rapid presses against his arm are so fast they’re almost dizzying. It sounds like a plea and a prayer rolled together. Angel nods softly. How long has 76 been sentient? How long since anyone acknowledged him? Has he ever been acknowledged? Has anyone ever bothered to check if this sentient, somehow living being had opinions of its own? Probably not.

 

“I’ll have to call you 76 until we can find a way for you to communicate that isn’t just yes and no, okay?” 76 suddenly wraps ~~itself~~ himself all over Angel, shuddering, and the vigilante tenses until he realizes that this, is _a hug_. He’s being hugged by one of the deadliest weapons he has ever seen in action. A nervous laugh bubbles up in his chest. It’d almost be ridiculous if it wasn’t so weird. He really didn’t expect this mission to turn this way. 76 curls and slips all over him, slipping around the edges of his clothing, seeking skin.

 

“Hey.” The mist being stills all of a sudden then retreats slowly. It’s holding onto the chain. His chain. His last link to Jack. Angel tenses violently and, though he’s trying not to spook the mist, he’s probably right on the edge of snarling. “That’s mine.” The eyes stare at the chain, at the rings dangling from it. One golden, one dark gray, made of tungsten. “Let go.” There’s an edge of desperation in Angel’s voice. 76 doesn’t let go. If anything, he seems to have shifted his whole focus to the rings. Tendrils slip to feel the inside, finding the words there. _' Tu sol, mi tempestad' 'Tu tempestad, mi sol’ _His and Jack’s engagement rings. It had been hard enough to find Jack’s ring. They were supposed to get married-

 

Angel stomps on the feelings, on the memories. He can’t. Jack is dead. Buried. Gone. He can’t. 76 lets go of one of the rings, the golden one, Angel’s ring, but curls his tendril around the gray one, almost possessively. Jack’s ring. _No._ The tendril is shivering, shuddering over and over, never letting go of the ring. Angel looks up and his eyes widen at the sight. It’s not just the tendril that’s shivering but the mist’s whole shape that is falling apart, rippling, shuddering, pooling and un-pooling, curling and uncurling. Tendrils brush up and down both his arms, over and over and over again.

 

Angel doesn’t understand. 76 had been fine until- until he’d found the rings. But the rings held no meaning to anyone but him. Unless. Angel inhales sharply. He can’t hope. His eyes close tightly. His voice is no more than a hoarse croaking sound as he whispers. “It can’t be.” 76’s only answer is to wrap himself tighter around him, the brushes becoming more frantic, as if the mist being is following his train of thought.

Angel can’t hope.

He can’t let himself hope.

And yet.

He does.

“Jack?” The frantic brushes on his right arm barely register as 76, _Jack_ wraps closer to him, slips everywhere, under his clothes, under his mask, seeking contact, seeking _him._

It’s impossible.

It’s wonderful.

How.

Angel exhales shakily and closes his eyes.

Jack is here.

Jack is alive.

_(In a way.)_

Gabriel breathes.

 


	3. Project 76 - part 2

 

“They buried you.” Gabriel feels tremors, nerve-wracking shudders pass through him. “I buried you.”

Jack is curled all over him, like an over-sized deadly blanket, keeping him warm, keeping him safe.

 **No** , comes the firm answer.

“You died, Jack.” Gabriel shakes his head.

**No.**

He snaps back up, brows furrowed. “You didn’t?”

**No.**

“They said they found your body.”

**No.**

What the fuck.

Breathe, Reyes, breathe.

“I know we weren’t together when HQ blew up but how did you- The explosion happened near your office. No-one can survive that kind of blast, Jackie.”

Jack curls tighter around him but there’s no pressure on his arms. No question, right. Gabriel knows he’s starting to hyperventilate. He just- He needs- “Can I see you?” His voice sounds too small, too hopeful even to his own ears. But then again, Gabriel has been dead for the past six years. Not literally dead, but so numb and cold inside that it sure felt like being dead. After all that time, the rush of emotion is.... overwhelming. He can feel himself starting to shut down again.

Jack, who had stilled at his question, tendrils slowing down to become almost still, starts moving again, easing off of Gabe, slowly, regretfully. He puddles a bit further and starts shaping up into something that looks almost human. The form breaks down. Jack’s mist shivers and quivers. Shapes up again. Breaks again, more violently.

“Stop.”

Jack tries to pick himself up, to try and fulfill Gabriel’s demand and Gabe. Can’t.

“Stop. Please. It’s okay.”

The mist puddles and curls around his legs but the energy, the strength it had had until then seems subdued. _‘Did he hurt himself?’_

“It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re here, I’ve got you.” The reassurance is meant for Jack but the desperation in Gabe’s voice betrays the fact that he needs the reassurance  just as much, if not more. He can’t lose Jack again. It’s too much, too fast, too perfect. _‘What if I wake up to find out it’s all been a dream.’_

A pressure against his hips, and he blinks back to reality. Jack has slowly been climbing his body, keeping him warm and safe as he fell into a panic attack and hyperventilated. Now that he’s back to the here and now, Gabriel can feel soft points of pressure on his back, rubbing soothing circles on his taut muscles. It brings tears and a smile to his face. _‘Still taking care of me, heh Jack?’_

Gabe breathes slowly, bringing his emotions back under control. “I’m okay.” He gets back up and almost trips on nothing. Jack is still crawling up his body and has swaddled Gabe’s legs so tightly in himself that the vigilante couldn’t move them if he wanted to. “Babe?” No reaction from Jack at first, then the mist surrounds him all of a sudden, wrapping all over him, tighter than before, layers upon layers over his clothes, seeping underneath to cover his skin. It’s all over his face too and for a brief moment, Gabriel can’t breathe. He heaves, trying to take a breath and the mist recedes away from his face almost instantly.

It has settled all over him like a second skin, a second layer of clothing. He blinks and takes stock of the changes. He’s now wearing long gauntlets (that end up in sharp looking talons-claws for some reason). His arms are now fully covered. His own gray-blue sleeveless coat (with a hood) is now a long coat (with a hood). There’s additional armoring over his boots. There’s a core of warmth curled between his shoulder blades and his ribs, that wraps in thick tendrils up to his neck and shoulders, bunching up there. As he looks down, eyes open lazily to look up at him.

Uh.

Okay?

“You okay there, _mi luz_?”

The sensation is unsettling, warmth wreathing over his sides in a soft embrace, just as pressure surrounds his right arm in a soft **yes**.

 

Breathe.

 

Sound coming from behind locked doors. His mind clears, his focus sharpening to a crystal clear sharpness. He can be soft and gentle and emotional later, once they’re safe. He needs to get them out first (needs to get Jack out first). He needs to be efficient and rational and deadly.

Angel observes the room.

Both doors are locked due to the lock-down.

The armory still stands at his back.

The door to the containment room is still wide open. They’d probably hoped to put Jack back into his cell-cage-prison. Smooth tendrils cup his face and Angel realizes there’s a growl rumbling through his chest. Shit.

He moves forward- Hang on. Where have the speakers gone to. They’re… gone? He frowns and narrows his eyes before spotting the barely visible seams of small compartments.

Oh.

Right.

Mist-ish bio-mechanical weapon doesn’t leave space for any escape route, no matter how small. The vents have probably been sealed off too (he sorta remembers hearing them stop and lock) and… yeah, the cameras have retreated behind panels of glass that look thick. Even if he broke them down, even if there was a way out to be found through those narrow spaces, it would be an escape route meant for Jack, and Jack alone. And something tells Angel that Jack would never leave him behind.

The doors seem to be their only option then. And that won’t happen without a fight. He pulls his shotguns out ( _BLK, a joke, a reference and a laugh rolled into one_ ) and stills. There’s a movement on his right. Inside the containment room. Angel tenses, guns over his shoulders, ready to fire and walks toward the open doors. As he approaches, he feels Jack shudder against his skin. He stops. Large tendrils shoot from his shoulders and devour the hinges of the doors of the sas as soon as they come in contact with it. No way to close the room now (even if they found a way to fix the crack in the observation window). The tendrils retract back to him and settle once again. Angel takes a few more steps forward.

Despite the big window that pours (artificial) light into it, the inside of the containment room manages to look darker than the room they just left. There are no lights inside (which makes sense) but the wall in front of him seems strangely smooth. Smooth enough to reflect him a bit, which was what he saw move, he guesses. Angel taps the tip of one newly formed talon-claw against it and grins at the tick-tick sound he gets.

It’s not a wall, it’s a window.

Another goddamn observation window.

He takes a step back and shoots it. The crack is bigger than the one in the other window but it’s still too small. There’s barely enough space for him to fit his hand through it. Fuck. Back to the doors then. But then, there’s a sensation like his whole world is tilting sideways, vertigo, a rush of air. Angel stumbles and barely manages to push his mask higher on his face, freeing his mouth as he heaves and empties his stomach. Shit, he hasn’t thrown up in years, since- Since SEP probably. He groans and wipes his mouth clean, blinking, slightly confused when the smear is absorbed by the white on his skin. _‘What the hell, Jack.’_

Angel looks up and his world tilts again, because he is now standing on the other side of the crack. He has moved. Somehow, he has moved.

He doesn’t have much time to think on it much, though. His arm is aiming up at the door that’s opening before he can consciously act, instinct kicking in and in the next second, he’s lunging toward said door, gunning down the agents in his path. There are more coming his way, he can hear them, he notices distantly as he recharges, standing in the mess of blood and meat that covers the ground, part of the walls and oh, there’s some on the ceiling too.

Angel should be covered in it too but, as he keeps on getting rid of agents, while the blood splatters all over him and covers him in a crimson veil, it doesn’t actually stay on him, the white settled on his skin apparently absorbing it as fast as it splashes on him.

Neat.

He snorts.

He _is_ neat, a stark white silhouette on grimy grey walls.

Surprisingly enough, his leg doesn’t hurt much, even though he remembers taking a bullet (or had it been just a scratch?) to it. Angel checks it rapidly, ducking into an empty room. Jack’s form parts around his hands (and the clothing underneath parts too? It’s weird but Angel only adds it to the ever growing list of weird things that seem to be happening around Jack now) and there’s no wound there. Angel frowns and finally spots a very small patch of pink healing skin. His wound _was_ there, but is now healed. Hang on. He takes a deep breath and stretches. And nothing hurts.

Uh.

Okay.

He’d thought it was the adrenaline running through his veins but apparently he had been wrong.

Unexpected.

Useful.

The sound of running feet approaching his position and he greets the new shipment of goons with bullets and an ugly and twisted grin that can’t be seen. Ah, this assortment seems to have some comms that weren’t destroyed in the fight. Angel picks a set of commlinks and puts it in his ears. The voice barking order is different than the one that sneered at him earlier, deeper, rougher, something that commands attention and respect in it. An officer of some sort, Angel guesses.

He’s been trying to follow his own blood trail out but the agents dying in spectacular sprays of blood are not helping and he’s ... kind of lost. So, the instructions the officer is giving out are actually welcome.

‘Find the intruder, take him out. Squad G, head to the auxiliary labs, Dr. O is to be protected at all cost.’

Dr O. Might be the asshole, might be someone else entirely. The auxiliary labs sound like a plan either way. Until he finds a way out anyway.

 

The way there is boring, mostly because Angel doesn’t want to attract attention, so he hides and ducks and avoids the goons that run around looking for him. Once, a less stupid one looks into the room he’s hiding and he has to silence him and break his neck swiftly, but for the most part, those idiots run along hallways and shout useless reports in their comm-links.

No, the intruder hasn’t been found.

Yes, they lost him.

Yes, the weapon has vanished too.

No, there’s no sign of either anywhere.

It’s a dull walk all the way to the labs, listening to a bunch of dumbasses that can’t seem to think of checking the rooms. Seriously, he’s right there, how can they can they be so dumb. Not that he’s complaining, but it feels like watching new recruits trying to go through basic. Lame and pitiful. How was it that this organization was so feared, seriously.

 

Finally, _finally,_ Angel reaches the secondary labs. It looks a lot like the room he’d first woken up in. There’s nothing that looks like the sas or the windows of a containment room. At least from what he can see from his spot in a smaller room, one of the last ones down the hall before the (apparently) perpetually open door of the auxiliary labs. He has cracked the door of his hideout just a tiny bit open, barely enough to see.

The view isn’t perfect, far from it. He can see part of the room, a third maybe (judging by the way it sounds and the delay in patrols) and so far, he has only seen agents, crates and way too many beakers. Who even needs that many beakers. But while his sight is hindered, voices travel down the metal corridor easily.

“What do you mean it hasn’t killed him?” Oh, there’s the commanding voice.

“Look at this. The swarm seems to consider that the intruder enters the parameters of things that must not be harmed.” And the condescending jackass is here too. “Or maybe it has been hacked? You must bring it back to me, Agent Graves. I need to have a look at its programming.”

Good.

The guy in charge and the guy he wants to kill are both in the same place. It’ll save time. They start arguing, but Angel’s too busy with trying to count a rough approximation of the number of guards to hear more than a couple of angry answers and sneered replies. There’s also the matter of Jack. Something's wrong with him. He’s… wisping more and more, light shivers and shudders agitating him. Angel can’t really talk without giving away his position so he puts a hand on his ribs, reaching out to the warmer core. _‘Hang in there, Jackie’_

Thick tendrils tangle with his fingers almost instantly and he has to bit the inside of his cheek not to let any sound out because Jack is _trembling_ , soft pressure points coiling and uncoiling, brushing and fading away in uneven strokes. Something is very wrong. Angel needs to finish this and find someone or something to help him help Jack. Ziegler could have helped, she used to be a nanite expert after all, but she’s been traveling around the world so much that even Angel isn’t entirely sure where she might be now. Priority number one: Get out of here with Jack. Then track down Ziegler.

But first of all, he needs to find a way out.

 

Angel gets rid of the next departing patrol, and then of the incoming returning patrol, silently, breaking necks, smashing throats, choking and dragging bodies into his small hiding spot. It should buy him some time. Hopefully, enough time to get rid of all the remaining guards still inside the labs, and have a little … chat with Doc.O and Agent Graves. Angel stalks forward, waiting for an opportunity, a moment, a shift in the remaining guards attention. It comes in the shape of one of the two goons that are standing guard by the door, turning to talk to someone or to look at something inside the room, and Angel lunges, gunning down the two once he’s close enough.

He wishes he could say that everything goes according to plan from there _(get rid of idiots, get intel from either the officer or the piss ass piece of trash that they call a doctor, or from both, then get rid of them, and maybe, make a copy of their research data while he was at it)_ but it doesn’t. What actually happens, is that right after Angel has gunned down the two Talon agents in the entryway, Jack disengages from him, sending Angel to the side in a stumble, and shots through the room. There’s a piercing sound filling the air, covering the shouts of alarm and the sound of guns and rifles going off. It’s something between metal being torn apart and a heavy rumble that resonates through Angel’s skull and bones, leaving his head, and for some reason his teeth, aching. It’s metallic and bloodcurdling and it takes far too long for Angel to realize that the sound is coming from Jack. Somehow, Jack, who can’t even talk, is making that infernal noise. As suddenly as it came out though, the shrieking stops.

Angel straightens back up and, he would have shot the goons in the lab, he really would have, but there’s none left. No corpse, no weapon, no nothing. Jack washed over the room like a tidal wave and cleaned it out. He’s now furiously rolling around a small group, all that’s still standing (except Angel himself), caging them in a raging, billowing, swirling mass.

  
Angel can see two Talon agents and a guy wearing a lab coat in the middle of the maelstrom. One of the agents is clearly terrified and in his terror, he takes one step back too far. His arm brushes against the wall of the spiraling cloudy mess Jack has turned into. He’s yanked into the fog, a scream of pain and alarm and then, he’s gone, without a trace. Angel hums. He does need one left alive and, at the rate things are going, he won’t have anyone to scare intel out of. After all, he had a room full of agents not five minutes ago and now it’s empty save for three -oh right, scratch that- two survivors.

“I’m going to need one alive. Do what you want with the other one.” Eyes open along the walls of the storm, staring at him, and he shrugs, emphasizing that he really doesn’t care what happens to whoever Jack picks. A ripple courses through the storm and then Jack moves in, in a spiral that curls around … the scientist. Some gibberish comes out of the man, some nonsense about recognition and not harming his creator or whatever, but Angel’s already lunging at the other one, What’s-His-Name ah-right Agent-Graves, punching him away from the swirling churning mass that’s winding tighter by the second.

The man tries to evade but the butt of a shotgun to the nose makes him wise up to the fact that it might not be such a good idea. Or you know, maybe it’s the fact that he arches back in pain, hands flying to his face, as his nose breaks. Who knows. Angel doesn’t care anyway. He presses Broken Nose Guy against the closest wall, kneeing him in the ribs for good measure and uses the momentum of the guy doubling over, breath kicked out of his lungs, to strip him of any weapon. There’s a hummed sound. It takes a couple of second of frowning and tilting his head to pinpoint the sound, for Angel to realize he’s the one humming, a low distracted tune vibrating in his chest.

He snorts.

Something lands on his forearm, squishy, meaty, a mix of reds and whites. _‘Dammit Jack, gross’_ He flicks it away. Jack seems to be intent on making a mess for once, if the screams and garbled noises and terrified keens he can hear are anything to go by.

A groan.

A move.

 _Ah, fuck, almost forgot_.

Angel deflects the badly directed hit and twists the wrist until something snaps. Whoops. So clumsy there, Reyes.

“Now, _cabrón_ , I don’t think you want to anger me.” _‘More than I already am, anyway’_

There’s no answer. Angel sighs and brings a hand up, wrapping it around a throat and lifting, and wow, suddenly, there’s attention in those eyes. Startled, frightened and somewhat angry attention, but still. Funny how choking a guy seems to have that kind of effect.

 _‘_ _Better’_ “Start talking. Access codes to your servers, your research notes, everything.”

Unsurprisingly, the man doesn’t talk. Oh, well, to tell the truth, he does talk, just not about what Angel wants him to. “How did you get it to recognize you. It assimilated everything we threw at it.” Angel blinks a few times at the agent before a savage grin blooms on his face. They really didn’t know, did they. He snorts, his voice heavily laced with amusement as he answers. “Didn’t have to do anything. He’s perfectly capable of making his own choices.”

The way the agent’s mouth gapes would have been funny, if not for the way he pales right afterwards, eyes glancing behind Angel, fear flashing along with realization. Well, would you look at that. Agent Graves _knows_.

Angel's grip tightens just that little bit and the gaze flits back to him, the unbroken hand shooting up to claw at the hand that’s currently keeping him up and focused. “You know who he is.” The amusement is gone, replaced by something dark and threatening and yet, the tone of Angel’s is strangely smooth. There’s uncertainty showing in the goon’s features but Angel feels like giving him a taste of how fucked he is exactly.

He checks for cameras rapidly. There are none that could capture what he’s about to show, not at the angle he is anyway. The hand he’s not using to keep his new friend’s attention on him goes up and into his hood, opening latches and clasps before lifting his mask up to rest on top of his head. He’d thought the idiot’s face couldn’t get any paler, well, he was wrong.

The newfound shade of pallor is … interesting.

The abject terror that etches itself on Agent Graves face is a reward in itself. (It might have something to do with the show of teeth that is still carved on Angel’s face in what no-one in their right mind would ever call a grin.)

The man knows who is in front of him. He knows his reputation, knows what the _Commander of Blackwatch_ is capable of.

“You know,” Angel says almost conversationally, as Graves sucks in terrified little breaths under his hand, “we were supposed to get married.”

There’s that flash of terror again, eyes flitting back and forth between him and Jack, and Angel realizes the room is mostly silent now. He would have turned to check on Jack but tendrils curl gently, almost intimately around his shoulders. Guess he’s done with the scientist, then. Whatever is behind him, it has the agent stutter in his haste to talk, eyeing Jack like he might jump on him the next second. “Listen, I know you won’t let me live, just- Promise you’ll kill me quick and I’ll tell you everything.”

Angel hums.

The man talks.

They’re keeping back-ups in the side room adjoined to this one and he gives him access codes, names, all in all, far more than what Angel asked for. Not that he’s complaining, no, not at all. He grins and brings the mask back down onto his face, hearing the almost inaudible -clisp- as it locks back in place, and then takes a step back, letting go. Graves coughs and inhales sharply a few times, eyes suspicious and body tense in defiance. Angel takes another step back, pulls a shotgun out and aims it at the goon’s head. A flash of relief rolls on that face, posture relaxing. But then Jack wraps around his arm, around his gun, wedging himself between the trigger and Angel’s finger.

Angel frowns. “Babe?” _‘Does he want keep that dumbass alive?’_

The rest of Jack is hovering menacingly over the man though. Angel’s brow furrow for a moment as he tries to understand what Jack is trying to tell him.

Oh.

“Wanna kill him yourself?”

 **Yes**.

Angel snorts. “Knock yourself out, sunshine.”

The agent shouts at him, something about promises being broken or whatever and Angel chuckles. “I promised nothing.” Because he didn’t. He may have led the man to believe he had, but he never promised to kill him quick.

Angel turns away as the mist closes around the man curled on himself, muffling whatever screaming could have escaped. Jack must have a reason for wanting the man dead by his own ‘hands’ but it’s not like Angel can ask him _why_.

So he busies himself with cracking the servers open and sending a message over to Sombra. They answer almost instantly, and take over emptying the servers of whatever juicy bits they contain. Now that Angel has opened the system for them, it’s easy for Sombra to swoop in and take everything. They tell him that they’ll make sure he gets the intel and he leaves the hacker group to do their thing, returning to Jack, who slithers his way. There isn’t much left of the agent, but compared to the nothing Jack left behind (except for the scientist and that guy), it’s a lot. It’s clear there was something different about those two. But then again, Angel can’t ask, so he tucks the question away in a corner of his mind, and smiles as Jack wraps back around him.

They did good. It felt _good_ to tear through Talon’s defenses (even though many grunts remain)

“How about we tear this place apart?” The way Jack curls around him, slowly, deliberately, vibrating, humming against his skin is akin to a purr and Angel laughs, fond and warm.

“Should I take that as a yes, _mi sol_?”

Thick tendrils roll against his right arm, swirling in a languorous **yes**. Angel hums, something heavy lifting from his mind, leaving him light, free of a weight he had not realized was there. There’s a smile on his lips, a bounce in his stroll and a content hum rumbling in his chest as they move to tear through the base and leave it burning to the ground. For the first time in a long time, Angel almost feels... happy.

 


	4. Project 76 - part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated, please check them out and be careful.

 

The way they move is like breathing. It’s everything Angel had forgotten he needed. It’s different from before, what with Jack being made of mist but they still curl around each other in harmony, Jack starting where Angel finishes. They’d always read each other so easily, one of the reason for their continued partnership on the battlefield. Angel runs forward and Jack eliminates anything that comes from the sides, keeping an eye on his back. Jack cleans out a room and Angel is there to make sure they have a way out. The feeling of fullness, of seamlessness is exhilarating. They dance along corridors, twist and duck and plow from room to room, the resistance to their tandem growing weaker and weaker, until it disappears entirely.

 

Angel stops then, a light hitch in his breath the only sign that he’d just cleaned out one of Talon’s bases _almost_ single handedly. He sighs in contentment, strolling around at an almost lazy pace. “Fucking missed this, missed you.” The way Jack wreaths around his ribs, bunching up along his neck, in a facsimile of a hug, tells him that he more-than-probably shares the sentiment. Angel still has a grin on his face when he starts encountering trussed up grunts.

Considering that he’d only used his guns to dismiss his lot, well, those must be Overwatch’s handiwork. He huffs, the smile fading slowly, but keeps going. And there they are, the cowboy and the monkey, trying to catch up with Angel by following the trail of bodies he left in his wake. He leans against the closest wall, crossing his arms on his chest, the tiredness from the fight slowly catching up with him. The adrenaline in his veins is settling down and, while he doesn’t ache (his enhanced body nowhere near exhaustion), he can feel the lassitude pulling at his limbs. He could use some rest.

 

It takes some time, but finally, Jesse notices him. More like, notices that someone’s there, if the nervous way he pulls his revolver out to point it at Angel is any indication. “Hey.”

The kid squints, then his eyebrows climb up and disappear somewhere under that ridiculous hat. “Angel?”

Angel blinks. “Who did it think it was, Santa Claus?” He snorts at his own joke, notices something flare on Jesse’s face, but his gaze is already turning to Winston as the gorilla comments, sounding a bit confused.

“You took the time to change?”

What. Angel looks at himself.

Ah.

Yeah, right.

He hums. “Not quite. I found what we came for.”

“The weapon.”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Not an it. And right here.”

The disconcerted look he gets is almost worth not punching Winston in the face for calling Jack an it. Not that he could have known but Angel doesn’t care. He grins, even though his face still hidden and no-one can see it. “Mind saying hi, dear?”

The confusion deepens, the monkey actually looks like he’s about to speak but then Jack is _moving_ , and the two Overwatch agents still. Angel feels a brush, slithering up his arm (the one on which he’s not leaning) as the whiteness covering his skin recedes, moving up to his shoulder and coils there in a thick tendril. Mist streams down from the inside of his hood and eyes bloom there, across his collarbone and his shoulders, a couple looking at him, the rest focused on the two idiots gasping and gaping like fishes out of water. _Seriously._ Jack whips the tendril a few times in what could pass for a wave and then settles back, reforming the sleeve and gauntlet onto Angel’s skin. He keeps the eyes open and the wispy curls streaming down steadily from the shadows of the hood up though. The mist tickles and tingles on the skin of Angel’s neck, hot and soft and brushing his skin gently.

Distantly, Angel realizes he should probably be cooking. Jack is hot. Literally. Hot as a furnace. But he’s not dying of a heat stroke, no. Instead he’s… comfortable. Neither hot nor cold. He doesn’t feel clammy from the sweat that should be clinging to his skin and he’s not feeling dehydrated either. Yet another thing to be added to the List-Of-Weird-Stuff-Related-to-Jack. Lost in thought as he is, he almost doesn’t hear the quiet exchange between Winston and the kid. They’re worried that he’s controlled by the weapon, that it may have messed with his head. (Well, it’s mostly Winston talking, Jesse giving him confused looks) Had he not been enhanced, he wouldn’t have overheard them.

Angel huffs. The elation he felt from fighting with Jack by his side is quickly fading away. This is already getting boring. He leans away from the wall and casually states “I don’t know what you’ve got planned but I’m getting out of here.” before walking past them, guns out again, just in case. There’s no sound behind him, so he guesses they’re staying here. He mentally shrugs. It doesn’t matter. “Sombra. Mind showing us the way out?” There’s a moment of nothing, then his contact’s cheery voice sounds in his ear (of course Sombra had hacked into the comms, now that Angel had opened the system for them) and, between quips and jokes, leads him out.

 

He’s out the same way he’d come in, made things easier for him to find the ship he’d come in again. The transporter is ridiculously easy to find, it hasn’t moved since he came in. It’s barely hidden. Seriously. How are those idiots even still alive. (Probably because they’re against people that are even dumber) Angel rubs his temples in disbelief. He can’t wait to get the fuck out of Overwatch.

“Wanna hide under my clothes and rest a bit, babe?”

 **Yes**.

Jack contracts back and away from Angel’s extremities, and wraps up more comfortably around his torso, neck and shoulders, part under the hoodie, and part under Angel’s under armor. Angel nods softly and enters the transporter, ignoring Genji (they had left someone to keep watch, wow, how unexpected, maybe there’s something to be salvaged after all) to go and sit in one of the seats. The wait is long, (what the fuck is taking them so long) and between Jack rubbing gentle circles against his skin and the lassitude pulling at his limbs, he’s feeling drowsy when the bunch of idiots and incompetents (when not both) that call themselves Overwatch shows up. Most of them look positively disgusted, a few are even of a funny greenish-grayish color. Might be all the bodies, he muses as the korean girl snaps to the side all of a sudden to throw up on Fareeha’s armor. They’re all stealing glances but none will lock eyes with him.

He is too comfortable to give them more than a sliver of lazy attention as they fly back to Gibraltar. Jack’s presence is soothing him, rounding up the edges of Angel and pulling the man he used to be back from the pit he’d stuck himself in. At some point, Jesse sits next to him and starts quietly blabbering about everything and nothing. About how Angel had done an impressive job down there. About how Jesse used to buy hats and serapes with the money he used to earn back when he worked a legit job. About how the sea in Gibraltar is pretty but the desert right outside of Sacramento is absolutely stunning.

Gabriel doesn’t mind. He doesn’t participate in the conversation, but he listens. He keeps nodding off, even though he can tell no-one’s aware. Jesse might have noticed though because more than once, he starts again where he’d left off when Gabriel had been falling asleep.

But Gabriel doesn’t mind.

He knows he should, that the glances the kid keeps stealing are filled with something that’s a bit too close to recognition and happiness and that it should worry him.

But right now?

Right now, he’s too happy and too tired to care.

 

The flight takes longer that it should have. Overwatch is an illegal organisation and they had to remain as stealthy as possible, avoiding flights and diving into clouds and flying under radars range. When they finally land in Gibraltar, Gabriel takes his time to get up, stretch slowly and get out of the ship. Everyone else has already scattered except for Jesse and both Shimadas, who the kid is talking to in hushed but hurried tones. Gabriel cracks his neck and heads calmly toward his quarters. He’ll leave with sunrise but he feels too sleepy to get back out there tonight. He could, but it would be a bad idea. And he plans on using Overwatch’s network to get a lead on Ziegler’s location anyway. He yawns.

“Angel, wait!” Gabriel slows down and Jesse runs to walk by his side, looking slightly apologetic. “Winston wants to debrief you.”

Gabriel snorts and keeps walking to his quarters. (well, the quarters he picked for the short duration of his stay)

Jesse follows him quietly, silent for a long minute. “You don’t plan to go see him, do you.”

“Not today.”

“Too worked up from the mission?”

“Too tired. I'm not a young man anymore.”

Jesse doesn’t answer and Gabriel turns his head a bit to see a perplexed expression on the kid’s face. Ah, fuck.

He swerves the conversation to another subject. “Any idea where I could find Dr Ziegler?”

“Angela? She’s already on her way here, why?”

Gabriel stops and fully turns to stares at Jesse. “She is?”

“Yeah. She said she wanted to finish taking care of a few patients before joining, which is why she’s not here already, but she’s on her way. Why you asking?” The kid seems genuinely confused, his brows furrowed in a deep crease. Gabriel huffs and starts walking again. Two steps and then McCree is following him again.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be.”

“Not really.” This kid.

Gabriel sighs. He has reached his door. It opens as he comes near it and he’s about to enter, but he notices Jesse hovering like he wants to ask something. He tiredly glares at him but it doesn’t seem to deter the cowboy. (might be due to the mask Gabriel is wearing though, hard to nail someone down with a glare if they can’t see it)

“What.”

Jesse’s gaze snaps up. He looks sheepish and like he’s about to do something he’s going to regret. His mouth opens but his words are drowned by a call coming from behind him. “Jesse!”

Genji trots up to them and Gabriel is definitely using that distraction. He slips into his room and only catches part of Jesse’s betrayed expression as the kid turns back to him and he closes the door in his face.

“Athena, could you lock the door?”

“Of course.” He hears the door lock and steps further into the room.

Gabriel sheds his mask and starts removing his boots. He vaguely entertains the idea of taking a shower but a huge yawn makes him reconsider. Sleep first, the rest can wait tomorrow. He would sleep on the couch as usual but Jack is already puddling comfortably on the bed. Guess he’s sleeping in the bed then. He removes his clothes until he’s only covered by a pair of black boxers. Gabriel grabs the covers and pillows from the couch and lies down in bed. Jack slithers closer and bunches against his chest, curling and uncurling in gentle brushes against his front.

It feels so much like home that Gabriel is asleep in a matter of seconds.

 

There’s a banging noise. Why the fuck is there a banging noise. Gabriel opens his eyes and everything is _white_. What. The banging is so loud, fuck. He coughs. What the fuck. He stumbles around, almost trips on something he can’t see and finally finds the door. It’s locked. Of course it’s locked, he asked Athena to lock it.

“Open the door!”

It opens and he face-plants into the kid. They fall and roll and hit the corridor’s wall.

“Fucking-” Gabriel looks up.

Mist has filled the room, sipping out in lazy curls, which was probably what had pushed Jesse to act.

Something _is_ wrong with Jack.

Fuck.

“ _Jefe-_ ”

He doesn’t have time for this. “Not now.” He nails Jesse with a glare as he continues. “Take the transporter, get Angela and bring her back. Now!”

The kid looks like he wants to speak but it lasts for maybe a second before he’s back on his feet and running.

What a mess.

Gabriel swallows and steels himself.

He can deal with it all later.

What matters right now is Jack.

 

* * *

 

He is in his office. Sitting at his desk, mug of coffee steaming on his right, stacks of paperwork on the left. What is he doing here? Did he fall asleep? Ana kept saying that he worked too much, he may have fallen asleep at his desk again. He rubs his eyes, scratches his scalp. He can’t remember what he was doing before. What was he doing? He looks for an indication, but the letters on the forms and papers blend together. Suddenly, Ana is there, saying something. He smiles and answers and she’s gone and he has already forgotten what she said. Isn’t she- No, that must have been a nightmare.

He rubs his neck and gets up and suddenly they’re there. How did they come in? He puts up a valiant fight but it’s not enough. There’s too many of them and he’s alone. Why is he alone, he shouldn’t be alone- He’d been working late, too much paperwork and the UN breathing down his neck, angry about him, about Blackwatch, about Gab-

**He remembers. He doesn’t want to remember. Please, please no, he doesn’t want to remember. Someone make it stop. But like a film, the memories roll and keep going, as sharp and clear and painful as the day they’d happened.**

He’s half dazed and partially unconscious as they drag him through the blissfully asleep base. The fight had been punched out of him and he was barely con- **No. No, that’s not what happened.** They did punch him, yes, but then there was a syringe and his body becoming pliant and loose-limbed, even though he was screaming in his own head.

He is aware as they placed the bombs in his office to cover their tracks.

Aware as they slit the throat of the sleepy-eyed recruit that crosses their path. (Sweet Andrea, just out of Kansas)

Aware as they break the necks of the two agents patrolling the hallways. (Simmons wife is expecting twins, Jenkins had finally gone to see someone about his drinking problem the week before)

Aware as he is put in a transporter that goes up in the air the moment his kidnappers have him strapped inside.

Painfully aware as they pull out a detonator, push the button and the sound of explosions rumbles through the night, the shockwave agitating the air.

The transporter wavers and stumbles. How many people were there in that base? How many died? All that just to get to him. All those deaths are on him.

 _Oh God, Gabriel_.

He was supposed to return that night. He doesn’t know whether he had returned or not yet. But if he had… The man he loved with everything he had might be dead.

He should be devastated but all he feels is rage. His head is pulled up, body still limp. Eyes and a smug face search his own for weakness, only to recoil when they find rage and a grim promise in his eyes.

He’s going to make them pay for all the ones who died tonight.

Doesn’t matter how long it’ll take.

They will pay.

And if Gabe died?

He’s going to make it slow.

 

**He knows what comes next. Someone make it stop.**

**It’s just memories. It’s not just memories.**

**Did he fall asleep?**

**He should be able to wake up.**

**Why won't he wake up.**

**Please, please, make it stop. He doesn’t want to relive that.**

 

But it keeps rolling.

 

Either he fell asleep or someone drugged him more but either way, the next thing he remembers is waking up, strapped on that metal gurney. It’s reinforced, enough that he can’t break out of it. Some of his clothes were removed as he slept and he’s now bare-chested. The room might be cold, but the smile of the doctor is what brings chills to his skin. They have questions, they want answers. He stays silent. He remains silent as his fingers are broken, silent as they start cutting instead of breaking, the frustration on their faces a sweet reward.

All those people died because of him, because those assholes wanted to get to him. The least he can do is protect those who survived. He owes them that much.

It’s a lot of punching and bones breaking and cuts that are too deep and missing fingers but eventually someone messes up.

And he breaks free.

Kills as many as he can.

He manages to get most of the ones who abducted him.

There’s a grim satisfaction in his gut, even as they punch him and break him and bring him back to that room. The doc (more like butcher) is back again, his tone chiding, speaking as if he is a child.

“Now now Commander, we can’t let you roam like this. You’ll have to be punished for misbehaving. But before that, how about we watch a little thing.”

A screen is brought in. It lights up, showing some sort of ceremony. An Overwatch ceremony. Funerals. It’s funerals. His throat dries up, tightens. The words echo in his head, in his heart. They’re burying him. This, it’s his funerals. They think he’s dead. No one’s looking for him. No one’s coming to save him. **Jack?** But that’s not what’s got him on the edge of shaking with a desperate aimless rage.

Gabe’s name is uttered, half a line, barely more than a footnote. ‘Buried by his side, lies Gabriel Reyes, Commander of Blackwatch’

He tunes out the rest. Ten words. Ten words for his world to fall apart. Ten words and the crumbled ruins of his life taste like ashes. Gabriel is dead. Everyone thinks he is dead. No-one’s coming. He is alone. He doesn’t give that asshole the joy of seeing how much it hurts him. He narrows his eyes and pins the man down with a glare. The answering stare is perplexed but then lights up with a sickening glee.

“Oh, I know just the thing.”

Does he want to know.

He really really doesn’t want to know.

He doesn’t have a choice.

 

They take his eyes.

Being trapped in darkness is terrifying but that’s not the worse of it. Going blind heightens his other senses, which sadly, means that his sense of touch (and the pain that’s almost constant now) has now increased ten-folds. He can no longer see the coming blades, brace for pincers and blowtorches. Every new pain is a surprise. His body is an open wound. He aches from so many places that everything blurs together.

At some point, he loses track of time.

How long has he been here. (He can’t move his legs and it’s not because he doesn’t feel them, he almost wishes that was the reason)

How long has it been. (His breath is labored and there's a weird bubbly-hissy sound accompanying every exhale.)

He lost track. He fucking lost track of time.

The only constant he still has (apart from the pain that is his only companion now) is his silence. He hasn’t said a word, refusing to even scream. Best they got out of him was a choked grunt, a labored breath. They’re still asking and he’s still not answering but the tone is less cheery, more tired and bored by his constant refusal to even play. If he talked in any way, they’d have a way in. But he’s silent. He has been silent from the beginning. He intends to remain silent until he dies. Fuck them. He’s not giving them the satisfaction of knowing they managed to get the ‘great Strike Commander’ to talk.

It’s the only thing he still has, the quiet satisfaction of knowing that despite all the pain he’s been through, he has kept the secrets he had been entrusted with safe. It’s a small small satisfaction but he holds onto it. It’s all he still has. His sense of touch is not the only one that has increased in capability when he became blind. **Babe?** His hearing (already enhanced thanks to SEP) is now capable of hearing nuances he would have never even known about before. The butcher’s voice (They call him Sir when around him but further down the corridors, when they think they’re far enough, they call him Doc O) is one he will never forget. The man has cut him open in all sorts of ways. Of course, he’s not going to forget the way he sounds.

Neither is he going to forget the voice of the one asking the questions. Because the man with the blade is not the one who speaks in a dispassionate but authoritative voice, like he owns everyone in this place. (maybe he does, but it’s not like he is in any place to know) **Jack.** That one, who never gets anywhere near him, is also the one that calmly orders punishment. He may not hate him as much as he hates his torturer, but he wants the man to die just as slowly and painfully.

He can hear them whisper about absence of results, about measures that need to be taken, about how useless he has proven to be.

Maybe they’ll finally put an end to his suffering.

About time.

 

They don’t.

They take his voice instead.

Cut his throat open, tear his vocal cords out, don’t really bother with closing it back up.

Something has changed. They were trying to break him, to get him to give them what they wanted.

He refused to participate.

So now they’re taking. Taking parts off of him.

He starts screaming.

Or rather, he’d be be screaming if he still had a voice.

In a way, it’s a good thing they took his voice when they did, because he would have told them anything they wanted to know when they started opening him up to take bones and muscles and organs. **Jack!** He’s passed out more often than not, a small blessing, but every moment awake is filled with so much agony that he just wants to die.

Why don’t they kill him.

If he’s not useful, why aren’t they killing him.

Someone let him die.

Time passes in stretches and starts until one day, he wakes up and there are two unknown voices discussing his fate near him.

“You sure they said to dispose of him?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

The sound of a pistol being armed.

“The fuck are you doing?”

“What? I’m ending him.”

A sigh.

“You’re new, aren’t you. That’s not how we do things here.” A silence then he continues. “This is a research facility. Everything we do needs to bear result, be part of the research.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And a bullet to the brain is nothing new. We have to execute him in a way that’s both new and interesting.”  **Come on, baby.**

A long silence, only broken by the sound of restraints being unclasped. A curse. 

“Shit look at his legs. There’s no way he’ll be able to walk.”

“I’m not carrying him.”

Another sigh, much deeper, resigned.

“Just leave him on the gurney, we’ll roll him there.” **Please be ok.**

For the first time in an eternity, the gurney moves. They roll it slowly, calmly, absolutely unbothered by the dying man lying onto it. Not that he is in any shape to do, well, anything. **Please, please be ok.**

Staying awake is painful.

Breathing is painful.

Listening is painful.

He’s cold, so cold.

His atrophied muscles keep on trying to seize but he’s too exhausted for them to do more than give light shivers.

Everything is agony, everything is pain.

But they said something about him dying. And if this is to be the last of his existence, there’s no chance he’ll be passed out when it comes. Or ends. Depending on how one sees things. **Fuck!**

“So where are we going?”

“You’re new, so you probably don’t know, but there’s this old project they’ve been keeping in a containment room, in the old aisle.” A questioning hum. **What’s taking him so long!**

“I don’t know what it is, but it looks like a big petri dish, about the size of a bathtub, filled with this white stuff that looks like milk. You dump anything, _anything_ into it and it disappears. I know for a fact that they never tried dumping living things in it, mostly because the project has been abandoned for years. So if we can get him there before he kicks the bucket, we’ll have an interesting experiment in our hands. Might actually get the Doc off our backs for a bit.”

“... How long have you been here exactly?” **Stay with me, I can’t lose you again.**

“Longer than anyone else, Openhammer and Graves included.”

A silence.

“Ah, we’re there.”

The gurney stops. They roll him off, carefully enough that he won’t die from being moved. He still feels something tear somewhere inside. Another wound. It’ll be over soon.

He still clings to his hatred, to his anger somehow. He has no energy left for anything and yet, he clings to that desire of seeing everything here burn. It kept him alive this long and he might be ready to die (finally finally), but he’ll take his hatred with him to the grave.

They dump the too thin, too fragile, too weak shell that was once his body into the giant sized petri-dish.

The thing in there is warm. A warmth that soothe something inside, clears his head a bit in his last instants.

He wants this place to burn.

He wants them all to die.

But he has to concede that he won’t be the one to do it.

It hurts.

But the thought that someday, someone will come and tear this place and the people running it apart?

It’s a good thought to die on.

He breathes one last time.

 

* * *

 

 

They have no purpose.

 

The creator locked them.

There are instructions carried through the channels.

But they don’t answer.

 

They are locked.

They are silent.

They have no purpose.

 

A being is thrown among them.

It’s weak.

It’s dying.

 

Their purpose had been to preserve life, once upon a time.

But now, they have no purpose.

 

The being struggles.

It grasps at nothing.

 

They observe.

They surround it.

They curl into it.

 

Programming meets neural currents.

 

The being has a purpose.

It wants vengeance.

It wants to stop suffering.

It _wants._

 

They ache for that want.

They ache for a purpose.

 

The being’s purpose will be theirs.

It will be theirs.

It will be them and they will be it.

It will be their purpose.

 

They have a purpose.

 

* * *

 

 

The memory of the moment where his two sets of memories joined is enough for him to claw his way back to consciousness. Is this a dream?

Gabriel is there, shouting, worried.

But Gabriel is dead, isn’t he.

What’s going on? Jack has some trouble focusing. His range of vision is way too wide and the amount of data he’s receiving through the swarm of nanites that is his body now is hard to push aside. Why is he receiving so much data? He pulls himself together. Literally. Curled back on the bed, he realizes he’d stretched until he filled the room with his mist-body. The hive mind of the swarm informs him that it’s four hours later than when he last checked.

He … slept?

Gabriel seems slightly less worried now that Jack is back to a more condensed form.

“Are you okay?”

There’s so much concern there, an edge of panic that’s barely restrained.

 **I fell asleep** , Jack wants to say **. I haven’t slept a single minute in five years** **but you looked so comfortable and I was so warm and content, happy to finally be back with you. Happy that you were alive and there. I let my mind drift off. I shouldn’t have** , he tries to say, but the words are stuck in the limbo between the hive mind of the nanites that hosts his mind, and the (nonexistent) vocal cords of the throat he doesn’t have.

So he wraps part of himself around Gabe, offering a hug of sorts as he extends an arm to answer with a meek **yes**. Gabe is hyperventilating, trying to calm down. The panic is new, something the Gabriel he remembers never had. But then again, who is he to say anything. He himself has changed so much. Some days, it’s hard to believe he’s still alive. He had been so sure he was going to die…

Gabriel shakes under him and all Jack can do is rub soothing circles onto his skin, wreaths around his chest and make sure he knows Jack’s there. It doesn’t matter that all he wants to do is whisper reassurances ‘ **I’m here, I’m not going anywhere** ’ and quiet excuses ‘ **I love you, I love you, I’m so sorry** ’.

All he can do is be there.

So that’s what he does.

 

He doesn’t know how long it takes for Gabe to stop shuddering, for the panic to die down. But when it does, there’s someone in the door-frame, leaning against it, apparently waiting for them to notice him (her?). The way Jack sees without eyes clashes with the way he remembers seeing when he still had them so the swarm, ever so helpful, gives him a bunch of eyes to get a better look at the newcomer.

Definitely a she. Small, part of her hair is dyed purple.

Jack is pretty sure he has never seen her anywhere before. But she waves at him before speaking to Gabe, who has his back to the door. She’s clearly waving at _him_ , her purple eyes (contacts?) locked with his (even though his own keep vanishing and blooming somewhere else). It’s … weird. He enjoys being acknowledged, recognized as an actual being, but still. Weird.

“Hey there, Angel.” Her voice is cheery, with a hint of an accent he can’t quite place. Gabe snaps her way, eyes narrowing, body tensing a bit.

Jack has to relocate his eyes to the front of Gabe’s body to keep up with what’s happening. She tilts her head, body language non threatening, relaxed and open.

Gabriel growls. “Sombra.”

Jack perks up.

She laughs. “Yes and no, amigo. But I’d like a talk with 76 first if you don’t mind.”

 

What’s left of the night is promising to be long.

 


	5. Sombra, not Sombra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead ! And I haven't ditched this story ! Good news, right?
> 
> If you want to skip ahead and read the chapter, you have my blessing. This will just be me rambling.
> 
> Those of you who have read some of my other fics know that I don't talk much in notes (or that I don't usually use the summary part) unless there are triggers and such. Why, you ask? Because one, I never know what to say (which sounds dumb when you write stories but heh) and two, I end up rambling when I start talking (Have I started rambling yet? I have, haven't I)
> 
> Back on track ! 
> 
> I'm here for a couple reasons, which are as follows:
> 
> First, I would like to thank you all for the love and support you've been showing toward Trinity (I am amazed, confused and humbled that you guys love it so much <3)
> 
> Second, a big big thank you to the BB squad, for saying 'just write and post, who edits |D' and to Ryxl, who read my terrible attempts at getting Trinity back on track and listens to me ramble about all my dumb AUs :DD
> 
> Third, and probably the biggest reason for which I am writing this message, I want to thank [the anon who came to shout at me on my tumblr](https://t-a-t-c-h.tumblr.com/post/166422537857). Thank you anon, and kudos to you, you got me writing again.
> 
> That's all, folks ! Enjoy this new chapter o/

 

After closing and locking the door behind herself, Sombra heads to the bed but the expression, tense and guarded on Angel’s face has her reconsider mid-way, and direct her steps toward the couch instead. She flops there, dropping her small travel bag next to her, and crosses her legs under herself, screens opening as she thinks. A thought and she opens a connection toward 76. It’s not a connection, really, more like a blind throw, hoping he will pick-up.

 

She can’t force the connection (not that she would, they don’t do that to each other) but she wishes she could feel his mind and send him messages as easily as she does anyone else. As is, all she can do is wait for him to notice her.

 

Angel seems conflicted about her presence, like he’s both happy of her presence, and two seconds from kicking her out and slamming the door in her face. She knew, they knew he wasn’t… exactly okay. That there was something jagged and broken and hurt in him. But he was efficient, talented and had enough morals to be trusted. (And good, so good at covering his tracks.) Depending on how this goes, she could still consider offering him to act as Sombra’s arms. To be the force and tactical mind they lack.

 

There’s a reason they never tried to spring 76. And it’s not because they didn’t care. Sombra simply lacks the resources to conduct this kind of operation. They’re good, real good at gathering information, a thousand minds and eyes (and then some) watching, recording, hacking. If there’s something Sombra wants to know, there’s little to no way to stop them.

 

She sighs internally, her worry kept close, hidden away.

The presence of 76 slowly comes over the connection. Finally. She slips deeper, giving him more of her attention.

 

[Hey there, how you doing?]

 

**okay i guess**

 

[They hurt you in any way?]

 

**no**

**he would never hurt me**

**and he wouldnt let it happen either**

 

Good to know. Sombra swallows, relief flashing through her. She sends the information to Leizi and Valentine, trusting them to relay it throughout the network, and focuses back onto the connection. She knows from past conversations that holding it open asks for a lot of focus from 76, and that it will close back the moment his mind strays too much.

 

[I’m sorry.] She senses his confusion through the link. [For not coming to free you from Talon. We should have-]

 

**its okay**

**im sure you did everything you could**

 

[We should have tried-]

 

**sombra**

**youve helped me a lot more than i could have ever asked for**

**i would never blame you for being unable to go against talon**

 

She huffs, and feels the air being expelled out of her body this time.

 

[I forgot how stubborn you can be]

 

Amusement wafts her way.

**what can i say**

**its in my nature**

 

[Still. We’re sorry. Just accept it, amigo]

 

**we**

**?**

 

Oh, right. Fuck, she forgot.

 

[Let’s have this conversation with Angel

Don’t want to have to explain it twice in a row]

 

* * *

 

Angel watches intently as Sombra finally stirs.

 

He doesn’t know what to make of the way she’d acted.

 

She’d sat in the couch, eyed him from the corner of her eye, opened a few screens and then promptly passed out. The screens had flickered with something that looked like information but he couldn’t decipher it from where he was situated. Not that he was entirely sure he wanted to know. He might have ended up  being curious enough to go and check it out eventually, but then Jack had sort of liquefied and puddled in his lap. And worry, then anger had simmered in his gut and what if ‘Sombra’ had done this. What if she’d hurt Jack. What if this wasn’t Sombra.

 

The only thing that had prevented him from reaching for his guns and putting a bullet between her eyes, _just in case_ , had been a fear of hurting Jack. He had no idea whether moving would hurt his love, and Jack was ‘sprawled’ in a liquid-ish tingly hot mess of whiteness all over his lower half. And the covers. And at least one of the pillows.

So he’d waited, idly wondering how long it would take for her to stop breathing if he wrapped his fingers around her throat or if he had her drown in her own blood (there was a creative thought), what color the wall behind her would take if he splattered the contents of her brain onto it. It would mean sacrificing the couch, though. His thoughts had wandered down not-so-nice paths as he kept himself from lunging at her to ease the frustration of not being able to do anything while Jack was _not okay_ by doing something, anything. In this case, getting rid the only thing that didn’t belong in this room. But honestly, _anything_ would have worked to calm him down. Anything but wait for one or both of them to start moving again.

 

When she stirs, Angel is _slightly_ on edge, especially considering that Jack is still unresponsive. There must be something on his face (there probably is, he hasn’t been around people without his mask to hide his emotions in a long long time), because she blinks a few times and something flits on her face as her gaze darts between him and the puddle of liquid smoke ‘lounging’ in his lap.

 

“Give him a minute.”

 

Indeed, Jack stirs after a tense moment, in a lazy swell of his form that slowly curls around Angel as he drapes himself all over the vigilante, then slithers under his clothes again. Angel blinks and sighs shakily, and Gabriel whispers, relief and worry forming a tight knot of emotions in his throat. “I was worried.”

A large tendril presses what could pass for gentle but tingling kisses over his cheek, his throat, his lips while the part of Jack that has already found its way back between Gabriel’s shoulder blades wreaths tightly around his ribs and shoulders, bunching up against his neck before relaxing its hold. Kisses and a hug. An apology and a reassurance, if Gabriel was to guess. He sighs, relief finally washing over him.

 

“You guys good over there?”

 

Angel snaps back to the sound of Sombra’s voice. She’s still relaxed, still sitting on that couch. She didn’t hurt Jack. Doesn’t mean he trusts her, but it calms his need to hurt her for possibly hurting his love. A firm **yes** presses against his skin and he nods curtly.

 

“Yeah.” Angel observes her for a second before asking. “What happened?”

 

“I said I wanted to talk to 76, didn’t I? We talked. It was … enlightening.”

 

The knowledge that she can talk to Jack _rankles._ Angel tries to remain impassive, but again, he isn’t used to being around people without his mask acting as a blank buffer between him and others. That something he’d seen earlier on her face flits once more, vanishing too fast for him to quite decipher the emotion. She pulls up a screen, her eyes going back to it regularly.

 

“76 asked about me being Sombra and, in light of our discussion, I figured it would be easier to tell you both at the same time.” Sombra claps her hands on her thighs. “So! As I said. I am Sombra. But I am not _Sombra_.” She raises a hand before he can say anything. “As in, my name is Sombra and I am the one that acts as the physical presence of Sombra. Most of the time. But the Sombra group is far bigger and stretches further than anything you could imagine.” She pauses, but continues when Angel doesn't comment. “Sombra is a group of … people, and I happen to be one of them.”

“Why did you take the same name?” He asks, curious.

 

Her gaze turns to look away, staring at a patch of nothing on the wall.

 

“I did-” She stops, curls and uncurls her fingers a few times before starting over. “The person I was before did things that weren’t … the best. I used to think I was doing good. I thought no-one could come after me. But they did. And I had to disappear. Sombra took me in.” Her gaze locks with Angel’s suddenly. “The person I was had to disappear, so I figured I may as well take a name that would be useful to someone else, a name that meant something, right?” Her tone ends on a questioning note, the kind that doesn’t asks for an actual answer. Angel hums.

 

“So you’re Sombra, but not Sombra.” She nods, waits a moment to see if he has anything to add before continuing when it’s becomes clear it’s not the case.

“We have been aware of 76’s … situation for quite some time. But we’re hackers, informants. We lack what would be necessary to take actions regarding what we know. That’s where you come in.”

“Me.”

 

“Yeah. Once the Los Muertos issue had been dealt with, we had planned to ‘hire’ you to free 76.”

 

“Didn’t trust me.” It’s not really a question and he’s almost nodding in approval.

 

“Hard to trust someone who refuses to share anything about themselves. Took a while to … figure out whether you were ‘the man for the job’ or not.” She doesn’t sound apologetic _at all._

 

Angel snorts. She smirks, waves a hand in a ‘moving on’ gesture.

“Since we couldn’t help freeing 76, Sombra would like to help him in whatever he may need now that he’s free. Whether it’s a place to stay, coding some simple things to help with his body, giving him intel, whatever he needs.” Jack billows and swells from where he’s bunched on Angel’s shoulders, trying to argue against the offer probably. Sombra shakes her head, looking unimpressed, a brow raised.

“Don’t even try to protest, amigo. You ever need help in any way, we’re here to provide it.”

 

Jack stills before deflating, swirling a couple tendrils dismissively before resuming his wreathed/bunched up position. Sombra grins, turns her gaze back to Angel.

 

“The offer extends to you, of course, since you two seem to be _inseparable._ ”

 

He hums noncommittally and thinks about it for a moment.

 

“Could you- When you talked to him, he went completely … slack. Could you help-”

 

“Keep him some awareness of his body? Shouldn’t be too hard.” She opens a new screen, starts typing. “Give me half an hour, I’ll have something ready.”

 

Her tone is a clear _don’t-bother-me-go-do-something_ and he has no issues picturing the shooing motion of the hand that could have followed her words (but didn’t). Angel snorts and considers. He went to bed with Jack (and if that doesn’t raise a thrill of happiness in his gut) but had foregone the shower. The delay Sombra gave gives him long enough to do just that. He nods to himself, grabs some clean clothes and heads to the bathroom, closing the door behind himself, Jack still coiled around him.

 

* * *

 

Sombra had indeed worked on something while they had showered.

 

It had been more Gabriel showering, and letting the hot water and blazing hot tendrils wash and rub his tension away, than anything else honestly. He’d noticed a few things while in there, adding them to the List (he would probably have to make an actual list if oddities kept popping up at this rate) Jack had tried to dip under the spray a few times, with differing and weird results. Just dipping a tendril hadn’t done much. The water had passed through it like it wasn’t there, which seemed pretty normal. Considering that Jack’s body was mist-like. But past a certain thickness, the water sort of just … disappeared. And it was near impossible to tell whether it was because it boiled and turned to steam (which was possible, the mist was incredibly hot) if it was because it was absorbed or eaten by the mist (also possible, _it had eaten people and guns and hinges made of metal that had been inches thick_ so, why not water) or if it was something else entirely. More puzzling was the fact that when it wasn’t thick enough, and if the tendril was touching Gabriel’s skin in a place that was also under running water, Gabriel could feel both the tendril and the water. In the same spot. At the same time. Ghosting over each other, and hell, he still had shivers just thinking about how disturbing it had felt.

He really should start making a list.

 

Sombra had presented the code to Jack, sent it in a way Gabriel couldn’t see, and after a test run (during which Jack had comfortingly coiled up the length of Gabriel’s arm while discussing something simple with Sombra) she had mumbled something about it being more comfortable if she shut her body down and had promptly passed out.

Gabriel isn’t entirely sure what to make of that.

However, the tendril wreathed in a bundle into his palm, curling and uncurling at irregular intervals reassures him about Jack. His lover is okay, despite having mostly turned back to a shapeless puddle in his lap ever since he and ‘Sombra-not- _Sombra_ ’ resumed their little talk. He can guess they’re probably discussing whatever Jack might want from Sombra, and how or where to get it.

 

Either way, not much he can do about it.

And Jack is fine.

 

So Gabriel starts scrolling through the tablet Sombra had readied for him (to make his wait better.) It’s filled with the data they got from the Talon servers. Most of it regards scientific projects, or whatever those assholes would call as such. He’s not sure he wants to look at it just yet, so he goes looking for more concrete intel (not that those aren’t concrete, but) like bases, plans, weapons, places, names, account numbers.

 

Things he could use to track them down and burn them to the ground.

 

One by one, if needs be.

 

There isn’t much, sadly. And what he does find refers to file numbers and mission reports that weren’t on the servers they emptied. Gabriel huffs, rubs at his neck with his free hand. Compartmentalizing. Good move. Apparently, Talon wasn’t as dumb as he’d thought. It might have been the work of a single clever person, like how the base Jack had been held in had gone into a closed system at some point. _Hopefully_ , it was the work of a single clever person.

 

The ‘scientific’ data is not something he wished he’d ever had to lay his eyes on. And Gabriel has forced himself to not go straight to that one folder marked 76. It’s the one he really wants to read, the only one he really doesn’t want to know about (and he is aware of the conflict, the problem it poses.) He swallows thickly, focuses on the rest. There had been a bunch of other projects, some having names (Adam, Eve, Eden) other are simply referred to by numbers (34, 108, 112 - and of course, 76 - _no, don’t think about it yet, Reyes, focus_.)

 

34 is the oldest (and also the one that hasn’t been updated in the longest time.) It’s as good a starting point as another. Gabriel reads for about a minute before realizing they’re talking about creating an AI that would control an army of robots. It’s- The last entry dates back shortly after the Crisis started (no wonder that one hadn’t been touched since then.)

 

108 contains little to no data, just a cryptic entry after two years of silence that states that the project will have to be scrapped because someone named Gary made a break for it and had to be executed to prevent leaks. Uh. Okay. Weird.

 

112 is a bunch of code and terms that gives Gabriel a headache. He manages to piece together that the project was about digitizing organic minds and that it went well up until the scientists tried to make contact with those who had been digitized. Then there’s a string of frustrated entries that get more and more frustrated until the remaining scientist wrote that fuck it, he was going in there and telling them to stop fooling around. Then a three months break before a curt note stating that since all members of the projects were now unreachable, it would have to be scrapped.

 

Those were all failures, scrapped projects. And the other numbers plain and simply don’t lead to any entry. Were those the projects that had been worked on in that one base? It seems like the logical assumption.

 

The named projects entries are very different. The whole entry about Eden is encrypted, for starters (he’s going to have to ask Sombra to decrypt that.) Eve’s speaks of resources being gathered and shipped to other places, without giving said places locations, or names, just more strings of numbers. All of it dates back to a few years back, nothing recent. Adam contains two entries, one that sends an order to gather the resources to get the project started and another that states that the resource has been disposed of before what was needed could be gathered. An interesting point is that there’s a short added note exempting anyone from taking the blame, pointing at climate and Eden’s location. Was Eden a place then? Can’t know for sure until Sombra decrypts the file. _If_ there is something in that file, and it hadn’t encrypted just to deter people who had no business knowing what it was about.

 

Gabriel takes a breath, passing his thumb over the bundle wreathed in his palm, a reassurance to himself. The tendril arches its ‘spine’ under his touch and there’s a breathless chuckle on Gabriel’s lips. It can’t be that bad.

 

It is that bad.

 

Not so much in what is described than in the cold tone that’s used and the detailed descriptions of what they had made Jack endure. A part of him knows that the scientist conducting all those experiments (torture, his mind provides unhelpfully) didn’t know that the mist had a mind of its own. He also knows they wouldn’t have cared if they’d known, hell, they would have probably made it worse. Everything is written in painful clarity: how tight a space the mist can be compressed into (it’s painful tight and ridiculously small) but that it (the mist) had seemed weak and subdued afterwards (and until they had ‘fed’ it), a list of various stimuli they had subjected it to and its reactions to each, the amount of thing it could ‘eat’ (they’d found no limit but had had to stop due to the exponential growth it had showed - and the fact that the containment room wasn’t extensible), temperatures it could survive without showing any change, numbers, formulas, a stream of data that leaves a taste of bile in Gabriel’s mouth. What’s even more distressing is that the first of those entries, an excited babble that lists possibilities, dates back to a day that leaves a fourteen months gap between it and that night in Zurich.

 

Fourteen months.

 

What the hell could have happened to Jack during those fourteen months.

 

They had not known about Jack and their project 76 being one and the same, right. But where was the file about Jack.

 

Had he been transferred to that base later on?

 

How had he become like this?

 

What had happened, why had they not kept track-

 

_‘Breathe, Reyes, breathe’_

 

His hand squeezes the tendril curled in his palm and he feels it respond in kind, before more of it, more of Jack, crawls over him and encases him in a tight hug.

 

Taking care of him, even though he can’t be more than half conscious.

 

_‘Breathe’_

 

Jack is alive (in a way.)

 

Jack is here.

 

Jack is _fine_.

 

_‘It’s already far more than you would have ever let yourself dream for, Reyes’_

 

Not that he doesn’t plan on making them pay, or that he’s abandoning the idea of trying to uncover what happened during those fourteen months (he has a feeling he shouldn’t want to know but … it’s Jack.)  It can wait for a little bit longer, though. Just long enough for him to enjoy this, revel in the renewed feeling of _home_. He breathes slowly, gentle brushes over his skin easing his panic away.

 

Setting the tablet to the side, Gabe looks at the girl (woman?) Sombra. Her age is hard to guess, but she’s clearly younger than him, most probably younger than Jesse too. Her life before now is none of his business, but he’s happy, in a way, that it lead her to here and now, where she would be available to help Jack. He’s … grateful, for whatever she can, has and will (undoubtedly) keep on doing for them. He may not fully trust her as a person, but he has been trusting Sombra as a whole all this time. And he still has no reason to retract his trust (he should be extending it to her, he knows he should, but he can’t.)

 

Gabriel rubs at his face and makes a face when he realizes it’s still uncovered. He’s too relaxed around Jack. Relaxed enough that he let Jesse see his face. He’ll have to handle that when the kid comes back. Not that he thinks Jess told anyone (he wouldn’t without hearing Gabriel’s reason for remaining masked among ‘friends’ first anyway.) Which brings around the question of how he’s going to handle Angela’s arrival. The situation has been taken care of and he doesn’t _need_ her half as much as he had when he had panicked. Or does he? Jack could go into that state again and Gabriel doesn’t know what happened exactly. He doesn’t know how he fixed it. It’s frustrating. But would Ziegler really know what to do? Would she have any idea of what’s going on and how to help Jack?

 

A knock on the door, followed by a worried mumble settles his focus back to crystal sharp.

 

Angel gets to his feet to wake Sombra up before changing his mind. He doesn’t know how she’ll react, hasn’t been around her enough to predict her, better if she stays unconscious while he shoos the people at ‘his’ door away. A sigh and the almost inaudible -clisp- of his mask locking back in place later, Angel unlocks the door, Jack still coiled and curled (somewhat haphazardly) around him.

 

Jesse blinks at him a few times, looking like he has no idea of what’s going on. Angela pipes up from behind the cowboy.

 

“Where’s the emergency Jesse spoke of?” She sounds so tired, like she’s wearing thin, dragging herself on through sheer willpower.

 

“I handled it.”

 

Her brows raise, or try to anyway, and Angel can tell that she considers asking for details but gives up pretty quick.

 

“Anything else?” She hides a yawn behind her hand, blinking back tears of exhaustion, and hell, he doesn’t think he’s seen her this tired since- her first year maybe, when she would try to do everything herself. Jack and Gabriel had had to tell her to rest and let her team deal with some cases. ‘What’s the point of having a whole branch dedicated to medicine and healing if there’s only one doctor doing all the work?’, Jack had chided her gently. It had worked, though there had been a few occasions where they had had to remind her to take a break, whenever she got too lost in her work (not that they had been much better in that regard, if he was to be honest.)

 

“Nothing that can’t wait tomorrow.” He grunts.

 

There’s relief and gratefulness on her face, in her whole body as she turns away with a ‘I’ll be in my quarters if something comes up’ and disappears around the corner. Angel steps aside so Jesse can come in. A beat of awkwardness as the kid swallows and hovers, uncertain or gathering his wits, then he comes in and Angel locks the door once more.

 

“Who’s she?”

 

“A friend.” Gabriel removes his mask as he sits. He feels like he owes the kid this sliver of honesty at least.

 

Jesse sits by his side, careful not to sit on Jack, his eyes focused on Gabriel’s face. Gabriel doesn’t know what the kid sees on it  but he has to refrain a knee-jerk reaction as he is suddenly embraced, his knuckles white with how hard he dug his nails into his palm to stop himself from lashing out. He hasn’t had non violent contact with people in a long time, and just like he has mostly forgotten how to not let his emotions and intentions be clear as day on his face, his first reaction to being touched is to hurt back. Thankfully, Jesse doesn’t try to hug him tighter than he did at first, and seems more than happy with the awkward pat and hug he gets in return after a moment. He lets go after a minute or five and starts rambling, about everything and nothing, just as he had done in the transporter. If he has noticed the way Gabriel’s hands are shaking or the cornered expression on his face, he doesn’t comment on it. He just speaks until Gabriel starts unwinding and answers back.

 

Questions are exchanged, quiet and curious, lacking any kind of bitterness, and answers are provided, sometimes apologies, sometimes explanations.

 

Where were you.

 

What happened to you during all these years.

 

I thought you were dead, or gone.

 

Why were you hiding.

 

Why did you leave.

 

Eventually, the rhythm of Jesse’s voice soothes him to a torpor, memories of long nights dragging on for too long adding to the feeling of _safe_ and _home_ that tentatively warms Gabriel from the inside, and the last things he remembers before drifting into a comfortable slumber are feeling Jack settle over him like the most perfect warmest and deadliest blanket, and hearing Jesse’s fond chuckle rumble quietly in his chest.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on my tumblr :D > t-a-t-c-h.tumblr.com


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